Downtown businesses share desire to make downtown Greenville safer

By: Sasha Horne | WNCT-On Your Side
Published: January 31, 2012

GREENVILLE, N.C. - The email exchange between the police and city council has business owners down town taking sides.

Is the current plan including blocking off certain streets working? Or do business owners think it's time for a new strategy?

It's been quite difficult to find business owners who are willing to go on camera and talk against police and town leadership, but one thing everyone has in common is a desire to make downtown Greenville a safer place.

"The things the chief said seems to be out of anger and things that should have been said before his last couple weeks in office,” said Kevin Howard owner of G-Vegas Magazine. Howard, a former downtown bar owner now runs G-Vegas magazine, he had a lot of positive things to say about the police officers working downtown. "The officers do a great job of dealing with what they are dealing with.”

But Howard is critical of what he calls a knee jerk reaction to the violence that sparked police to ramp up their presence down town every weekend.

"On a Thu-Sat after 2 a.m., it's chaotic. People flood the streets and they don't seem to know which way they are going," said Howard. “They've put so much emphasis on making this two block radius so safe from 10 o'clock to 2 a.m. that the criminals can actually stand one block away and see all the officers and commit all the crimes they want.”

Pat Moore runs a barber shop, and while he's not around at night, he has had to deal with the chaos downtown.

"They'd call me in the middle of the night,” said Moore. "I've had my windows knocked out many, many times"

But in recent years, Howard says things have been different, “These bars, they'd lean against the window and have these fights, but now I have the extra protection out there that helps me out.”

Howard says the responsibility doesn't just belong to the police and elected officials, “If they all get together start enforcing the laws that are on the books and start being responsible as owners I think you'll see a big change.”

It seems all parties involved want things to improve. It's how to do that which seems to be the one thing they can't agree on.